For those of you who aren’t aware, there is a new bill being (The Stop Online Piracy Act H.R.3261 & PIPA, its sister bill S.968) proposed by the United States government that aims to censor all access to non-US websites involved with copyright violation.
This proposed bill has caused a lot of discussion about the method that they are proposing to go about this, & that it infringes upon the right to freedom of speech.
Lawrence Tribe, a Harvard Constitutional Law Professor points out…
- “Although SOPA’s supporters have described the bill as directed at “foreign rogue websites,” the definitions in the bill are not in fact limited to foreign sites or to sites engaged in egregious piracy.”
- “To compound the problem, SOPA provides that a complaining party can file a notice alleging that it is harmed by the activities occurring on the site “or portion thereof.” Conceivably, an entire website containing tens of thousands of pages could be targeted if only a single page were accused of infringement.”
- “In effect, the bill would impose the very monitoring obligation that existing law (in the form of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998) expressly does not require. SOPA would undo the statutory framework that has created the foundation for many web-based businesses.”
Notable sites such as Wikipedia have announced that they will be closing down for 24 hours today to show their objection to this bill, as also reported on the BBC news’ website.
We’re just finishing testing on the new mobile ‘Check In’ addition to our Facebook Guest List App, which will allow you to check your guests in to your event on any mobile device that can connect to the internet. You won’t even need an internet connection on the door to your event. Simple load the page while you do have a connection, & then when you need the guest list, just re-open the page. It’s clever enough to keep an offline copy for those of you who have the latest smart phones that support offline pages.